Holger A. Klein

Professor Klein studied Art History, Early Christian Archaeology, and German Literature at the universities of Freiburg im Breisgau, Munich, London (The Courtauld Institute of Art), and Bonn. His research focuses on Late Antique, Early Medieval, and Byzantine art and architecture, more specifically, on the cult of relics, reliquaries, and issues of cultural and artistic exchange in the Medieval Mediterranean.

Professor Klein joined Columbia University as an Assistant Professor in 2000, was promoted to tenured Associate Professor in 2006, and to full Professor in 2011. He served as Director of Art Humanities (2003; 2007–09), Director of Graduate Studies (2010–12; 2017–20), and as Department Chair (2012–15). During the 2015–16 academic year, Prof. Klein was Alliance Visiting Professor at the Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne and taught Columbia undergraduates at Reid Hall. He also served as Director of the Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies (2017–21), Faculty Director of Casa Muraro in Venice (2015–23), and as a member of the University Senate (2023–).

In addition to his tenure at Columbia, Professor Klein held an appointment as the Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art from 2004–07 and continued to oversee the reinstallation of the museum's renowned collection of Medieval and Byzantine art until 2010. His work as a curator includes various international loan exhibitions, among them Restoring Byzantium. The Kariye Camii in Istanbul and the Byzantine Institute Restoration (Wallach Art Gallery, 2004), Medieval Treasures from The Cleveland Museum of Art (Bayerisches Nationalmuseum/The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007–08) and Treasures of Heaven. Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe (Cleveland Museum of Art/Walters Art Museum/British Museum, 2010–11).

Professor Klein is the recipient of a number of prestigious fellowships, awards, and prizes, including the 50th annual Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching (2011), which honors a Columbia professor's commitment to undergraduate instruction as well as inspiring leadership; the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award (2012), which recognizes unusual merit as a teacher of undergraduate and graduate students as well as outstanding scholarship; and the Wm. Theodore de Bary Award for Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum (2014).